UK/FRANCE - AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) has created a new structured and alternative investment management (SAIM) division within the firm to house its structured and hedge fund businesses.

The new group, with operations in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong, has total assets under management of around e12bn and employs 45 people.

AXA IM manages over e40bn across the range of alternative investment products, in addition to SAIM including private equity, real estate and quantitative investment.

More recently, the house has been building on its expertise by developing hedge fund strategies including convertible arbitrage, statistical arbitrage and equity long/short and now has around e450m in hedge fund products.

Robert Kyprianou, head of SAIM, said: “We’ve been an early mover in offering structured products and hedge funds to our clients and have some excellent capabilities here. Now we want to ensure they get the focused attention they deserve. In particular, we’ll be providing more targeted support for our sales teams as they distribute this specialist product range.”